The Chinese government has issued a stark warning to its male citizens in Bangladesh: stop seeking foreign wives through matchmaking schemes or so-called “wife-buying” practices. The state-run Global Times reported Monday that this crackdown is part of Beijing’s efforts to address growing social instability caused by decades of disastrous family planning policies, including the infamous “one-child policy.”
The warning highlights the fallout from China’s gender imbalance crisis—an estimated 35 million more men than women, a gap largely created by the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal enforcement of the one-child policy from 1979 to 2015. Under that policy, millions of families aborted or killed baby girls in favor of sons, leaving a generation of “leftover men” with little chance of ever marrying.
With China’s restrictive immigration laws and a shrinking pool of women at home, desperate men have increasingly turned to Southeast Asia, fueling human trafficking rings and fraudulent matchmaking scams. In Bangladesh, Chinese men have been targeted in cross-border dating scams or lured into exploitative arrangements. Similar patterns are emerging in Vietnam, Pakistan, and even Russia—countries where the supply of marriage-age women exceeds that in China.
The Chinese Embassy in Dhaka issued a rare public statement on Sunday, warning citizens to avoid illegal matchmaking services, stay away from “buying a foreign wife,” and remain cautious of online romance scams. It emphasized that international matchmaking is illegal under Chinese law and warned against being misled by cross-border dating platforms.
This warning follows alarming reports of trafficking, particularly in Vietnam, where as many as 75% of trafficking victims are funneled into China. The crisis has become a diplomatic issue as China’s demand for foreign brides grows. Local governments in China have responded to the marriage and fertility collapse with extreme measures, including “fertility call checks” harassing women about their reproductive cycles and turning empty kindergarten classrooms into nursing homes due to collapsing birth rates.
The Chinese Communist Party’s population control policies—marked by forced abortions, infanticide, and mass sterilizations—have left a demographic disaster that the regime cannot undo. Even with a three-child policy, the collapse of marriage rates and the growing desperation among Chinese men seeking wives abroad reveal the long-term societal damage wrought by decades of communist rule.
